How can your relationship be healthy if you are not healthy? It’s easy to look at the other person in your relationship first, but a relationship requires two people. Although we all desire to have happy, healthy relationships, the only person in the relationship you have the power to change is yourself with the help of Jesus. Jesus tells us about self-examination and evaluation in the following passage.
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matt. 7:3-5, NIV)
You are One Half of Your Relationship
You are one-half of your relationship and responsible for making yourself as healthy as possible with Christ’s help. Although you are responsible for changing yourself, NEVER forget that you are not responsible for changing the other person or their choices. Also, remember that you can’t make anyone want to change either.
Unfortunately, many believers have grown up believing that certain words and actions are okay and normal, but they are unhealthy or toxic abusive. While growing up, we subconsciously form our definition and understanding of love from our imperfect messages, experiences, beliefs, and role models. We may not realize that we are operating from our imperfect love design, even though we have received Christ’s salvation.
How are You Letting God and Jesus Change Your Life?
God created us to grow our faith with Him by studying His word and through our praise and prayer. He wants us to ask questions and wrestle with Him. He wants our active participation, including wresting with his concepts of unconditional love, correction, blessings, and other things that we don’t yet understand. God welcomes our honesty, confusion, frustration, and anger in complete surrender.
As we learn to ask the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us and follow his path, Jesus will bring truth, revelation, and healthiness. However, if we don’t make God first and priority in our life every day, how can we know where to go, what to do, and grow our trust in His truth? Without spending time with Jesus and God every day, how can we know their hearts?
An article in Christianity Today, July 2020 states, “Between early 2019 and 2020, the percentage of US adults who say they use the Bible daily dropped from 14 percent to 9 percent, according to the State of the Bible 2020 report released today by the Barna Group and the American Bible Society (ABS).”
If people who profess to be disciples of Christ are not taught how to study God’s word, or they are not seeking how to hear from God from his word, how can they become healthy? Jesus tells us why we make mistakes. “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” (Matt. 22:29, NIV)
Growing Healthy Fruit
The only perfect person and healthiest person to walk the earth was Jesus Christ. He came down to be our example of following God first, loving others as he loved himself, and showing us what healthy relationships look like. If you have grown up and unhealthy environments, you may not know what healthy relationships look like.
To focus on becoming healthy in Christ, let’s look at the aspects of health in the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control. (Gal. 5:22-23, NIV) When you walk with Jesus and make God your priority every day, your spiritual fruits will produce an abundant crop to share with others.
Practicing these fruits and growing your faith in God every day can help you identify what you need to work on with Jesus. For the first eighteen years of my life, my experiences in relationships had many unhealthy and toxic characteristics. No matter how much I heard other Christians tell me to love others, my point of reference came from unhealthiness or toxicity.
To help you see the difference between healthy and unhealthy or toxic relationships, review the list below. For more information about the difference between healthy, unhealthy, or toxic abusive relationships, go to these resources. Signs of Healthy and Unhealthy Relationships
| HEALTHY | UNHEALTHY AND POSSIBLY TOXIC ABUSIVE |
| Equality | Unequal standards |
| Respectful | Disrespect in hurtful ways |
| Complement | Criticize and humiliate |
| Appreciate | Resent |
| Compromise | Control and demands |
| Open communication | Uses thoughts, emotions, and beliefs against you |
| Forgiveness | Uses grudges, resentment, pay-back punishment |
Living in Christ’s Healthy Love makes You Healthy
Regardless of the healthy or unhealthy way you grew up, it’s vital for you to see how healthy relationships communicate and act with one another. It’s also important to make sure that you love yourself in healthy, respectful, Christ-honoring ways. Remember, Jesus lives in you. How you choose to treat yourself, is in reality, the way you are choosing to treat Jesus. Likewise, how you let others treat you is how you are letting them treat Jesus living in you.
If you need help identifying and overcoming some unhealthy characteristics or patterns in your life and relationships, seek the help of a professional counselor experienced in abusive relationships, even if you don’t believe your relationship is abusive. I have chosen these counselors above relationship counselors because they can identify unhealthiness and toxicity more quickly than other counselors.
The only way to eliminate unhealthiness and toxicity in your life and relationships is with Jesus and the help of a professional counselor. When we have weeds of unhealthiness and toxicity, we must pull them out of the roots, fill them with the healing ointment of Christ’s grace, and then fill the holes with his light and love for complete healing. Becoming healthy in Christ is a lifelong process of working in the garden of your mind, heart, spirit, and soul with Jesus.
Find support and grow in your relationship with Jesus. Join my private Facebook group Growing Through God’s Transforming Grace, https://www.facebook.com/groups/growingthroughgod.
